Summary: Saudi
Shia religious leader and cleric who was a well-known figurehead at
several mass anti-government demonstrations and became a prominent
outspoken critic of Saudi Arabia's ruling Sunni royal family in some of
his sermons for their treatment of the kingdom's Shiite minority who
have long complained of marginalizion in the country, and whose arrest
in 2012 during which he was shot by Saudi security forces had sparked
widespread unrest and triggered days of protests in which three people
were killed in the oil-rich Eastern Province in the wake of the Arab
Spring that erupted in early 2011.